Analyst Says Anti-NSA Campaign Benefits America’s Enemies

by Cliff Kincaidon August 16, 2013

Print:
Share:

(This is a special report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism)

Trevor Loudon, the author of a new book on socialist penetration of the Democratic party and the U.S. Congress, says, “Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this entire NSA scandal is the way the U.S. and international left have used the leaks to turn the American right into a battering ram against U.S. military intelligence capabilities. Historically it has always been the far-left that has sought to castrate U.S. government intelligence capabilities—always using ‘civil liberties’ as a lever.”

Loudon is the New Zealand blogger who broke the story of Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist Party member and suspected Soviet espionage agent, who was a mentor for a young Barack Obama during his growing-up years in Hawaii.

As someone whose KeyWiki site serves as an authoritative encyclopedia on the left, Loudon has a lot to say about the continuing controversy over NSA leaker Edward Snowden. He gave this columnist his comments on how the story has developed and who is behind it.

“When Edward Snowden first made his revelations,” Loudon notes, “it wasn’t the left who first rushed to his support—it was the right, including Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. It was completely understandable. In the wake of Obama’s IRS and Associated Press scandals, Snowden’s revelations were seized on by many on the right as one more example of President Obama’s tyrannical bent. Hundreds of bloggers, commentators and grass-roots activists sprang immediately to Snowden’s defense, even after it became clear that Snowden was hopping from one enemy-controlled territory to another.”

But Loudon points out that some conservative media personalities, such as Lee Stranahan at Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, analyzed the evidence as it came in, noting that the real motive of those behind Snowden was to “attack the military via the NSA and criticize America’s attempts to defend itself from terrorism…”

Loudon’s new book is being released as the blogger from New Zealand travels throughout the United States on a speaking tour. One of the many members of Congress he analyzes in his excellent book is far-left Democratic Rep. John Conyers (MI), who teamed up with Republican Tea Party Congressman Justin Amash (MI) to sponsor a bill to gut the NSA’s terrorist surveillance powers. The bill almost passed the House.

Loudon says that Rep. Amash, chairman of the House Liberty Caucus, is a patriot whose conservative credentials are beyond question. However, “he should ask himself why an out and out socialist like Conyers would want to limit the powers of the NSA,” Loudon says. “Conyers has a more than 40-year history of collaborating with the Communist Party, and almost as long with the Democratic Socialists of America.”

This association raises “red flags,” he says. Loudon points to how the Communist Party (CPUSA), which was funded by Moscow and engaged in espionage against the U.S. Government, created a front group, the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. The House Committee was a target because it had held numerous hearings exposing the activities of the CPUSA and its front groups.

Loudon’s research shows that Frank Wilkinson, who was jailed in 1961 for defying the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was “a vocal foe of the FBI’s supposedly tyrannical and out-of-control Director J. Edgar Hoover.” Wilkinson was in fact a 40-year veteran of the Communist Party USA, an affiliation common to most of his organization’s leading supporters. And it turned out that Wilkinson’s FBI dossier was more than 130,000 pages long.

Loudon comments: “J. Edgar Hoover’s memory has been invoked several times in the current scandal as an example of someone who used government-gathered intelligence to harass and blackmail his personal enemies. As an effective opponent of communist subversion, J. Edgar Hoover suffered a decades’ long campaign of slander and denigration from the left. The fact that Hoover had 130,000 pages of information on a pro-Soviet communist activist, who led a long and successful campaign against one of the country’s most important anti-subversive organizations, proves that information gathering does not necessarily lead to inappropriate use of that information.”

Another figure involved in the anti-FBI campaign was Frank Donner, the former director of the ACLU’s Project on Political Surveillance. Donner’s FBI file, turned over to this columnist, is over 1,500 pages long.

As we have pointed out, Donner worked with the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), which is now active against the NSA, to undermine the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the U.S. Government. Donner, like Wilkinson, had a lot to hide, since he was a member of the CPUSA who traveled to Russia and had contacts with Russian espionage agents. He wrote several books attacking U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA. He especially hated the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which grilled him on his CPUSA activities. He took the Fifth. But Donner had the last laugh, as the committee and its successor, the House Committee on Internal Security, were abolished in the 1970s.

The same forces are now working against the NSA.

It is noteworthy that in 2012, the Soros-funded Open Society Institute (OSI) held one of its panel discussions, “National Security Secrecy and Surveillance: Defending the Public’s Right to Know,” to organize opposition to the NSA. The name of one panelist, Tim Shorrock, rang some bells for me. I had covered his work with CounterSpy, an anti-CIA publication, back in 1983. CounterSpy had exposed Richard Welch as a CIA agent before his murder by terrorists in Greece. Shorrock told me, “Every once in a while, you’re going to release a name of somebody who may be the target for somebody. That’s something that happens when you do investigations.”

At the time, Shorrock told me that he favored the abolition of the CIA, adding, “I don’t think the KGB is a threat.” He also said, “I support a lot of what the Cuban government does.”

In 2009, when we focused critical attention on Glenn Greenwald getting an award named in honor of leftist journalist and identified Soviet agent I.F. Stone, Shorrock came to Greenwald’s defense, recalled my interview of him, and denounced me as “a longtime McCarthyite and deranged right-winger, who has been seeing reds under every bed since he was probably an infant.”

Greenwald, now with the British Guardian, would emerge this year as Edward Snowden’s handler.

Turning his attention to this case, Trevor Loudon notes that reports indicate that in March 2013, when he sought a job with NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at an NSA facility in Hawaii, Snowden presumably signed the required classified-information agreements and would have been well aware of the law and potential penalties for breaching laws regarding the information he would have access to. Nevertheless, Snowden broke these agreements and has been charged with espionage. He has been granted political asylum in Russia.

Before taking the job in Hawaii, Loudon notes, Snowden had already been in contact with Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, who serve together on the Board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a funder of WikiLeaks.

This is a critical point, reflecting the fact that Snowden could not have engaged in espionage without the help of others, including left-wing networks based in the U.S. Accuracy in Media has reported that the Freedom of the Press Foundation “is made possible by the fiscal sponsorship of the Foundation for National Progress,” the publisher of Mother Jones magazine, which is backed by several prominent liberal foundations, including the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros.

Loudon noted statements Greenwald delivered at an international communist conference, including that “the only thing that can truly strengthen America’s national security is a weakening of America.” Loudon responded that “He openly wants to see America weakened militarily. What better way to weaken America militarily, to the advantage of Islamic terrorism, than to weaken or destroy the NSA?”

Loudon, who broke the story of former White House official Van Jones’ Marxist background, says many left-wing groups backing Edward Snowden have one thing in common—they hate and distrust America. “Many of them have ties to Marxist or anti-American groups,” he says. “Some are linked to international communist fronts. Several are tied to hostile foreign regimes. Their agenda in most cases is to weaken America’s defenses. Attacking and weakening the NSA would be cheered on by America’s enemies all over the globe.”

“The United States has always had its enemies in Congress and the media,” says Loudon. “What is of most concern is that millions of American patriots, motivated by genuine constitutional concerns, have been turned into attack dogs against one of their few remaining effective means of national defense. America’s enemies must be laughing uproariously over this. Political influence on NSA, if any, should indeed be questioned. The constitutionality of its methodology should be debated. But Americans need to turn their guns on those who would gut the NSA, not those would defend it.”

The outcome of the Bradley Manning case sheds light on the nature of WikiLeaks and its collaborators. Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, was convicted in July of espionage for stealing and leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, and has now apologized for damaging America’s national security. “I am sorry that my actions hurt people,” he said. “I’m sorry that they hurt the United States.”

Manning had supporters on the left and right, including former Congressman Ron Paul, who called him a “hero.” A left-wing group that includes Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon has proposed that Manning receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Cohen, a professor of journalism at Ithaca College, is the head of the institute that gave that award named after Soviet agent of influence I.F. Stone to Glenn Greenwald. Solomon, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat, was endorsed in that run by Greenwald.

Greenwald endorsed Rep. Rush Holt in New Jersey’s special Senate Democratic primary election on August 13th, and even appeared on Holt’s behalf in an online town hall meeting. But Holt came in third, with only 17 percent of the vote, getting trounced by Cory Booker.

Still, as Loudon’s nearly 700-page book demonstrates, the Marxists have a strong presence in the Democratic Party. His detailed account of “Communists, socialists and progressives in the U.S. Congress” is the work of an investigative reporter covering the stories that are just ready and waiting to be exposed by the U.S. media.

The irony is that a blogger from New Zealand has to do the job for us.

Comments

I see very few who see that Marxofascists are taking over the USA, in large part, through the surveillance state, who do not think we need an **appropriately** active and involved NSA.

If a Russian in 1917 feared German Marxists and because of that, backed Lenin, to counter the Germans, what would we say about that?

RRStubbs

NSA is a distraction. INFOUSA provides more information about you and is available, for a fee, to the public. They track everything. What you buy with a credit/debit card, addresses changes in real time, magazines you buy, &etc.

On the other hand, the Affordable Community Care Act provides the mechanisms for transferring wealth from you to the 2% poor people in third world countries. Where the real damage is being done is in State Legislatures that have bought into this Marxist economic system. Oregon is a prime example.

For example, you can buy a Bronze Health insurance plan on a 60/40 basis. Family of four pays $20,000 per year for the 60 percent. The remaining 40 percent is your responsibility to pay.

So lets say you have a $100,000 hospital bill. The insurance pays $60,000 and you pay the rest. If you fail to pay the rest ($40,000) within 30 days, the Oregon Health Authority can issue a ‘Distraint Warrant’ instructing the sheriff to sell your house and other assets including the contents of your safety deposit box.

If the sheriff refuses to exercise the Distraint Warrant then the Health Authority can assign an employee with that task and circumvent the legal authority of the Sheriff (Very Unconstitutional).

The property must be sold in 60 days and the proceeds paid to the Oregon Health Authority. This action supersedes your mortgage which is now in default. Your financial problems are just beginning and there is no way to plea or argue the decision.

As a matter of fact, as your blood is boiling, you go to a Representative or the Oregon Health Authority and complain. You use a few cuss words to describe the process and what is happening. You have just threatened the healthcare representative, you can be arrested and charged with a Felony.

As such, they can now enter your home, search for weapons and charge you with the crime of being a felon with a gun. Like I said it gets much worse.

And then there is your child who has come home and when asked about school tells you about being indoctrinated into the earth culture. She seems tearful and you inquire further, ‘Honey, what is wrong?” She responds, “I want to be responsible for the environment, so 30 days ago I signed a consent form to be sterilized, after all its mankind that is destroying the environment. (Right out of Marxism). Today, I went to the clinic with all my friends that also signed on and they sterilized us right there in the Planned Parenthood Office.

You ask, why didn’t you talk about this last month, honey? Why? Well its because they made us sign a form that doesn’t require your knowledge or input in this regard.

The entire NSA program that we keep discussing in the media is an international file sharing program that has no level of accountability and their isn’t anything that’s going to change that. So what we’ve entered into is the age of communist propaganda.http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/99/06/NSAandGCHQ.html
Here is how the game is played. The British liaison officer at Fort Meade types the target list of “suspects” into the American computer. The NSA sorts through its wiretaps and gives the British officer the recording of any American citizen he wants.
Since it is technically a British target of surveillance, no American search warrant is necessary. The British officer then simply hands the results over to his American liaison officer.
Of course, the Americans provide the same service to the British in return.
All international and domestic telephone calls in Great Britain are run through the NSA’s station in the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Menwith Hill, which allows the American liaison officer to spy on any British citizen without a warrant.
The , I’ll-spy-on-yours deal has been extended to other Western partners, particularly Canada and Australia. The British with the help of sophisticated NSA computers, can bug just about anyone anywhere.

TNTCrazyLady

Of course the Anti-NSA ‘campaign’ benefits our enemies.

However let’s look at the bottom line: IF the NSA had not overstepped their boundaries and our government had NOT let them get away with it until they were ‘caught’ by responsible US citizens – there would be NO Anti-NSA campaign.

Therefore the NSA IS RESPONSIBLE for this very REAL threat to US defense, safety and security!!!! Not the US citizens who are the final and ultimate ‘check’ to our government and it actions/inactions!!!!

American Kulak

Thank you Arlen for calling Msrs. Ledoun and Kincaid in particular to account for his shameless Surveillance State promotion. The NSA and Booz Allen Hamilton in particular have become Obama’s personal Stasi. I wish to God someday Larry Klayman gets the opportunity to confront Kincaid, with cameras rolling, and ask Cliff to rationalize the electronic harassment of conservative patriots like Klayman and his clients the gold star family the Stranges by the NSA. Or better yet, Doug Hagmann should confront Cliff about Cliff’s shameless NSA shilling and ask him whether the NSA’s contractors or corporations like to them have been funding Cliff’s efforts these past six months.

2BlackCoffee71

This reads like a fine piece of pro – U.S. military-industrial complex propaganda, meant to spread fear about those “terrorists.”

The Democrat Party has been infiltrated and compromised by the CPUSA for decades, since at least the 1960s if not before.
Why do they ALWAYS side with the commies, or other of America’s enemies?
They have elected two communist mole presidents now. Bill Clinton allowed critical US missile and rocket technology to be sold to the Chicommies for a song.
Before Bent Willie’s intervention (thanks for the “campaign contribution” Red Army Agent!) all that the Chinese missile whiz kids could hit was a nearby village, as their junk technology crashed and burned as regularly as the Weather Channel warns us about the Dreaded Global Warming!

Kincaid, in his fanboy love of all things NSA, does not seem to get that their metadata collection is not only irregular and unconstitutional and a gross arrogant abuse of power–paid for by us–but that by clogging their acres of computers with totally irrelevant information they are SLOWING the tracking of real terrorists.
I mean the ones not in the White House or Congress or various taxpayer-funded agencies.

That naughty word “profiling” is the key. Baddies have a profile. They do certain stuff. They say certain stuff. They associate with certain stuff, like each other.

Like TSA searching the 80-year-old granny in a wheelchair at the airport while letting a bearded Mideasterner with fire in his eyes go on by the “screener,” this chasing after the 99% of irrelevancies rather than cutting to the chase does NOT enhance our security.

We’re threatened by our own government. Surprise! Corrupt and arrogant governments are how great civilizations tend to fall. Not invasion. The inner crash sets the stage for the Barbarian Invasion.

We’re also threatened by countless baddies who’ve come over the border thanks to Bill C., friendly regular guy W, and of course Mole#2. None of them met an illegal/potential terrorist that he didn’t like.

What NSA should be doing is publicizing the scheming and conspiring that goes on in Washington by “our” people who laugh at their oath of office.

When did an oath mean anything to a psychopath?

RMThoughts

Is this guy for real. NSA has turned America into a Truman Show. It is used to corrupt the political process, spy on our allies — the distrusts that the NSA creates is the biggest aid to our enemies.

RMThoughts

Of the federal government turning our country into one big “Truman Show” will help the enemies of the Truman Show. The massive “soviet” style surveillance state we have becomes is to monitor citizens and social control. Fortunately Kincaid is a small government, individual rights conservative working for the shows producers. He is looking for the re-birth of the Soviet Union, unfortunately he is looking on the wrong side of the ocean.

BG Davis

“Historically it has always been the far-left that has sought to castrate
U.S. government intelligence capabilities—always using ‘civil
liberties’ as a lever.”
What nonsense. Libertarians are not “far left” and they are the ones making the most noise about invasion of privacy and civil liberties. And there are plenty of conservatives who don’t like the NSA activity. Biased articles like this need to stay on message, which in this case is: the Anti-NSA ‘campaign’ benefits our enemies.
Childish, knee-jerk “lib bashing” (or neo-con bashing, or Obama-bashing, or whatever) is just self indulgence. The blame game is a waste of time and resources.
Facts: The NSA needs meta-data to track subversion. They are NOT listening to your phone calls the way J. Edgar Hoover’s boys used to do. And–irony of ironies–they aren’t even collecting the data themselves; they get it from private ISPs and private companies like AT&T.
Americans can be so dumb and childish when it comes to creating bogeymen and ignoring the real problems.
“Snowden could not have engaged in espionage without the help of others, including left-wing networks based in the U.S.”
Total fecal matter. Snowden had access to all the info he exposed. The writer of this article is either very poorly informed or a total liar. Maybe both.

BG Davis

You’re comments are wildly inaccurate at best and dishonest at worst.
There is no ” Affordable Community Care Act.” And there is no health care law in the US that transfers ” wealth from you to the 2% poor people in third world countries.”
Your attempt to link failure to pay your debts to health care is ludicrous. If you don’t pay your debts, you’re a deadbeat.
A “child” can’t sign a legally binding consent form or anything else that is legally binding.
There is no program of mass sterilization by Planned Parenthood.
WFT is “earth culture?”
If Oregon is such a hellhole, why do so many people from other states continue to move there? If you live there and hate it so much, vote with your feet and leave.

Well said. NSA, CIA and FBI, like some politicians on right, left and middle, are often their own worst enemies. but, of course, We all need to also realize the cross-dressing Hoover and the conspiracy focused Kincaid were and are obsessed and somewhat demented.

David L. Allison

Dear Nut job: Please restrict your rantings to issues that really deserve your wild and wide-eyed attention. Get some facts and data somewhere outside the boundaries of your fantasies of conspiracies and stupidity.

Robert M. McAdam

The NSA has done nothing to protect this country. Instead it is a tool of the Ruling Elite to control Americans. These idiots could not stop the Boston Marathon Bombers, the California Terrorist Attacks, and countless other attacks.

gustafus

The enemies shouldn’t BE WITHIN>>.. and then we wouldn’t have to worry about a 2 tiered system of rights…